ON ST. PETER, ABBOT OF CANTERBURY.
About A.D. 606.
CommentaryPeter, Abbot of Canterbury in England (S.)
From manuscripts.
[1] Among the first Apostles of the English, Peter can rightly be numbered — the helper of St. Augustine and the first Abbot appointed by him of the monastery of Saints Peter and Paul at Canterbury, which was afterward called St. Augustine's. St. Peter's feast day. The English Martyrology and Ferrarius in his General Catalogue of Saints record his feast on this day. But on December 30, Hugh Menardus in the Benedictine Martyrology, Constantinus Ghinius in the Feast Days of Holy Canons, Johannes Molanus in the Feast Days of the Saints of Belgium, and Ferrarius in the cited Catalogue record him. Wion also mentions him in the Appendix to book 3 of the Tree of Life, but assigns him no fixed day.
[2] Concerning him, St. Bede writes in book 1 of the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, chapter 33: "Augustine, when he had received the episcopal see in the royal city, recovered in it, supported by royal aid, a church Christ Church, Canterbury. which he had learned was built there in ancient times by the labor of Roman Christians, and he consecrated it in the name of the Holy Savior, our God and Lord Jesus Christ; and there he established his residence and that of all his successors."
[3] "He also built a monastery not far from the city to the east, in which, at his urging, Ethelbert built from the foundations a church of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul and enriched it with various gifts, The church of Saints Peter and Paul. in which the bodies of Augustine himself, of all the Bishops of Canterbury, and of the Kings of Kent might be placed. This church, however, was consecrated not by Augustine himself but by his successor Laurence."
[4] St. Peter drowned. "The first Abbot of that monastery was the priest Peter, who, sent as a legate to Gaul, was drowned in a bay of the sea called Amfleat, and was given an ignoble burial by the inhabitants of that place. But Almighty God, to show what kind of man he had been in merit, caused a heavenly light to appear every night above his tomb, until the neighboring people, observing this and seeing that he had been a holy man who was buried there, He is translated. investigated whence and who he was, and removed his body and placed it in the church at Boulogne, with the honor fitting for such a man."
[5] Canterbury. So writes Bede. What he calls the royal city is Dorobernia, or Durovernum — called Daruernum by Ptolemy, now Canterbury, commonly called Canterbury — which, during the flourishing Saxon Heptarchy, was the capital of the kingdom of Kent and the royal seat, until King Ethelbert bestowed it, along with the royal authority, upon Augustine, who had been consecrated Archbishop of the English nation, as William Camden writes in his account of Kent.
[6] Christ Church. That Church of Christ, built by ancient Roman Christians before the coming of the English, recovered by St. Augustine and again dedicated to the worship of our Savior Christ, later restored and wonderfully adorned by his successors, rises in the center of the city with distinguished majesty toward heaven, visible even from afar. Camden treats of it in his account of Kent. It is indeed the cathedral church, and it had attached to it a Benedictine monastery, which Henry VIII dissolved. The venerable Clement Reyner treats of it at length in his Apostolate of the Benedictines, treatise 1, section 1, paragraph 17.
[7] The monastery of St. Augustine. The monastery of Saints Peter and Paul, later called St. Augustine's, was in the eastern suburb of Canterbury, a rival of the cathedral, once greatly enriched by King Ethelbert, who granted the Abbot a mint with the right of coining money, as Camden reports. The greater part of it is buried in ruins; the rest has been converted into royal residences. Clement Reyner treats of this monastery at length in his Apostolate, treatise 1, section 1, paragraph 13. It will be mentioned again in the life of St. Ethelbert on February 24, of St. Augustine on May 26, of St. Laurence on February 2, and elsewhere.
[8] Boulogne in Belgium. Boulogne, where this holy Abbot is said to have been buried, is a city of Belgica Secunda, adorned with a bishopric now for twelve hundred years; which was later united with the see of Thérouanne of the Morini, but was restored when Thérouanne was destroyed. It is commonly called Boulogne.
[9] The bay of Ambleat. The bay of the sea called Amfleat — in Capgrave, Amflet — I believe to be that which occurs between Boulogne and the fortification of Blackness; whence also the nearby village in the map of Mercator is called Ambleteul, or the bay itself is named from the village, at the mouth of the little river Marquise.
[10] St. Peter was a Roman. Trithemius mentions St. Peter the Abbot in book 3 of Illustrious Men of the Order of St. Benedict, chapter 55, and says he was a monk of St. Gregory at Rome. The same is reported by Clement Reyner in the cited passage. He was sent by St. Augustine to Rome with St. Laurence, to report to St. Gregory what they had accomplished in England and to consult him on certain matters — a legation about which we shall speak more fully in the life of St. Augustine. Harpsfield also treats of Peter in the seventh century, chapter 19, and writes that he was a Roman by birth, as do certain others.
[11] When he died. Trithemius says Peter flourished in the year 620. This is refuted by a letter of Boniface IV, dated the 3rd of the Kalends of March in the eighth year of the Emperor Phocas, that is, the year of Christ 610, which Clement Reyner reproduces. But an error has crept into the number of the Indictions; for it was then the thirteenth, not the fourth, as the text has it. In that letter, mention is made of the Abbot John, who succeeded Peter; and so we conjecture that Peter was drowned about the year 606.